Two award-winners — one with three years’ experience, one with 36 — show how impossible this question is to answer. Both are rock stars of the classroom: one got students to paint heritage moments on the library ceiling, the other gets struggling readers to sum up their novels using Twitter.

How can a seniority list measure the magic teachers bring to their craft at such different points in a career?

Yet a new rule this fall across Ontario that favours seniority when hiring teachers has made experience the latest hot-button issue.

School boards, most teachers’ unions and even teachers’ colleges are fighting a new regulation that says a principal must hire from among the five candidates with the most experience.

Critics argue a seniority list is a clumsy tool for divining the best applicant. Teachers can be gifted at any stage, they say.

In very different ways, Patricia Baker and Sabrina Cicconi are proof.

Patricia Baker was still on a roll after 30 years of teaching when she had the idea of having her Grade 12 Canadian history class at Leaside High School paint murals on the library ceiling. It was such a hit, each class in the four years since has added its own overhead mural, including an affectionate “O Canada” ode to innovators.

Baker also had teens write children’s books about Canadian history that she had published and stocked in the local library. Principal Jeannette Plonka called the project “amazing.”

Baker spruced up the old mock Parliament concept with a fresh, newsy G20 Club version and hosted a summit for 200 teens — all this in her last decade of teaching.

“I loved it; we actually got to write policy and resolutions and some students even acted as security and protesters who came running into committee meetings,” recalled Grade 12 student Ali Chatur. “Mrs. Baker made a connection with every one of us.”

When Baker retired in June after 36 years with a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal for her work teaching history, Leaside named a hall in her honour — the Baker Gallery — for her efforts to track down every school team photo for the past 30 years.

“You grow more creative over time, I think. I’m not even close to the teacher I was when I began,” she said. “At first as a new teacher, you’re so worried about the curriculum. Over time I think you build a trust with your school administration,” and gain the confidence to push the envelope and “present new ways to engage students.”

Sabrina Cicconi was still an undergrad when Baker first asked students to paint a mural.

But in five years Cicconi has become a teacher and won a Premier’s Award for new teacher of the year. As a new supply teacher at Monsignor Fraser Catholic Alternative School, she was asked to give a crash course to colleagues on how she uses social media with struggling students.

“One thing I had them do instead of just write an essay about novels like Wuthering Heights or The Lovely Bones was to create a Facebook page for one of the characters in the novel,” said Cicconi, 25.

“This showed me their understanding of the book even better than an essay because they’d have to show what language the character might use on a Facebook page, and who they’d date, and what pictures they might post.”

She had students write summaries in the form of a Tweet or text balloon from an iPhone.

“Literacy is changing and students shouldn’t necessarily be marked on how they work with pen and paper,” said Cicconi. “Twitter and text-messaging are really just new forms of publishing a summary.”

Cicconi has landed a rare permanent job, at St. Basil-the-Great College School in Toronto. But many peers are struggling to find work because they lack seniority.

“Unfortunately, the art of teaching is only partly a gift from God — we have to learn by doing,” said Ryan, “and seniority is the fairest measure.”

Only experience can teach you the folly of asking Grade 8 students to act out the Meech Lake Accord, a lesson he learned the hard way as a rookie.

“When I started teaching in 1990 I was nowhere near as good a teacher as I was even by 1993 and 1994. My first year, I found the students’ behaviour challenging. I was literally exhausted.”

By second year he’d taken a course in classroom management and knew the curriculum better. By third year behaviour was no longer an issue.

So it makes sense, Ryan said, to give an edge to teachers with more experience.

“We walk in thinking we’re a ‘natural’ but then reality smacks you in the face and the only way you can learn those skills is by doing.”

One U.S. study suggests math teachers hit their stride by their fifth year — it measures their “effectiveness” by their students’ test scores — but then they level off for the rest of their careers.

“It likely takes more like 10 years for most other subjects,” said University of Toronto education professor Clive Beck, co-author of an ongoing study of 42 teachers about how they feel they have improved in their first eight years on the job.

“It’s called ‘Growing as a Teacher,’ but it should have been called ‘It Takes Many Years,’ ” said Beck who is conducting the study with education professor Clare Kosnik.

Teachers have told them over time they’ve become better at making the curriculum more relevant to students, building a sense of community in class, and being inclusive and handling behaviour issues.

“Many say their first two years are horrendously traumatic and anxiety-ridden, but over time they have learned to choose priorities and be able to spend less time on other topics.”

The Ontario government has presented 14 Teacher of the Year awards in the past three years and nine of the winners had 10 or more years of experience, with four topping 20 years.

“Ideally we like to see a school’s staff with a blend of experience,” said Education Minister Liz Sandals. “Young people are going to bring enthusiasm and the latest pedagogical techniques, and teachers with more experience have dealt with all sorts of situations.”

Sabrina Cicconi said she likes “the interplay that happens between new teachers and seasoned teachers.

“They kind of take us under their wing and we bounce ideas off each other.”

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